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« "tit 


THE   NATURE    AND   ORIGIN 


NOUN   GENDERS  IN   THE   INDO-EUROPEAN 
LANGUAGES 


PRINCETON    LECTURES. 

A  series  of  volumes   containing  the  notable  lectures  de- 
livered on  the  occasion  of  the  Sesquicentennial 
celebration  of  Princeton  University. 

The  French  Revolution  and  English  Literature.    Six  Lectures. 

By  Prof.  EDWARD  DOWDEN,  Trinity  College,  Dublin. 
Theism.     Two  Lectures.     By  Prof.  ANDREW  SETH,  University  of 

Edinburgh. 

The  Discharge  of  Electricity  in  Gases.  Four  Lectures.  By  Prof. 
J.  J.  THOMSON,  University  of  Cambridge. 

The  Mathematical  Theory  of  the  Top.  Four  Lectures.  By  Prof. 
FELIX  KLEIN,  University  of  Gottingen. 

The  Descent  of  the  Primates.  By  Prof.  A.  A.  w.  HUBRECHT, 
University  of  Utrecht. 

The  Nature  and  Origin  of  the  Noun  Genders  in  the  Indo- 
European  Languages.  By  Prof.  KARL  BRUGMANN,  University 
of  Leipsic. 

The  Claims  of  the  Old  Testament.  Two  Lectures.  By  Prof. 
STANLEY  LEATHES,  D.D.,  King's  College,  London. 


THE 

NATURE    AND    ORIGIN 

OF    THE 

NOUN    GENDERS 

IX    THE 

INDO-EUROPEAN   LANGUAGES 

A   LECTURE   DELIVERED  ON  THE  OCCASION  OF    THE 

SESQUICENTENNIAL  CELEBRATION  OF 

PRINCETON  UNIVERSITY 

BY 

KARL   BRUGMANN 

PROFESSOR  OF  INDOGEEMANIC  PHILOLOGY  IN  THE 
UNIVERSITY  OF  LEIPSIC 

iEranslatclJ  bg 
EDMUND   Y.    BOBBINS 

PRINCETON  UNIVERSITY 


NEW    YORK 

CHARLES   SCBTBNEB'S   SONS 
1897 


Copyright,   1897, 
BY  CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS. 


SRnitoersttg 
JOHN  WILSON  AND  Sox,  CAMBRIDGE,  U.  S.  A. 


THE    NATURE    AND    ORIGIN    OF    THE 
NOUN  GENDERS  IN  THE  INDO- 
EUROPEAN  LANGUAGES1 

AMONG  the  many  valuable  contributions  of 
William  Dwight  Whitney  to  linguistic  science 
is  one  especially  important  and  fundamental 
principle.  It  may  be  stated  in  these  words.  In 
explaining  the  prehistoric  phenomena  of  lan- 
guage we  must  assume  no  other  factors  than 

1  This  lecture  is  based  chiefly  on  the  following  articles : 
Brugmann,  Das  NominalgescMecht  in  den  indogermanischen 
Sprachen,  Techmer's  Internationale  Zeitschrift  fiir  Sprachwissen- 
schajl,  IV.  p.  100  sqq. ;  Zur  Frage  der  Entstehung  des  gramma- 
tischen  Geschlechles,  Paul  und  Braune's  Beitrdge  zur  Geschichte 
der  deutschen  Sprache  und  Literatur,  XV.  p.  523  sqq. ;  Michel, 
Zum  Wechsel  des  Nominalgeschlechts  im  Deutschen,  I.  (Strass- 
burg,  1889),  p.  3  sqq.;  Zur  Beurtheilung  von  Jacob  Grimm's 
Ansicht  iiber  das  grammatische  Geschlecht,  Germania,  XXXVI. 
p.  121  sqq.  Other  recent  articles  on  the  subject  in  hand  are  : 
Roethe,  Vorrede  zum  Neudruck  der  Grimm'schen  Grammatik, 
Band  III.  (1889),  and  Anzeiger  fiir  deutsches  Altertum,  XVII. 
p.  181  sqq.;  Henning,  Ueber  die  Entwicklung  des  grammati- 
schen  Geschlechts,  Zeitschrift  Jur  vergleichende  Sprachforschung, 
XXXIII.  p.  402  sqq. 

1 


33360 


2        NATUKE   AND   OKIGIN   OF   NOUN   GENDERS 

those  which  we  are  able  to  observe  and  estimate 
in  the  historical  period  of  language  development. 
The  factors  that  produced  changes  in  human 
speech  five  thousand  or  ten  thousand  years  ago 
cannot  have  been  essentially  different  from  those 
which  are  now  operating  to  transform  living 
languages.  On  the  basis  of  this  principle  we 
look  to-day  at  a  much-discussed  problem  of 
Indo-European  philology  with  views  very  dif- 
ferent from  the  views  held  by  the  founders  of 
Comparative  Philology  and  their  immediate  suc- 
cessors. I  refer  to  the  problem,  how  the  Indo- 
European  people  came  to  assign  gender  to 
nouns,  to  distinguish  between  masculine,  femi- 
nine, and  neuter.  This  question  is  of  interest 
to  others  besides  philologists.  What  man  of 
culture  who  has  learned  languages  such  as  the 
Greek,  Latin,  or  French  has  not  at  times  won- 
dered that  objects  which  have  no  possible  con- 
nection with  the  natural  gender  of  animals 
appear  constantly  in  the  language  as  male  or 
female  ?  In  German,  for  example,  it  is  d  e  r 
fuss,  but  die  hand ;  der  geist,  but  die  seele  ;  in 
Latin,  hlc  hortus,  hlc  animus,  hlc  amor,  but 
ha  e  c  planta,  haec  anima,  haec  felicitas ;  in 
Greek,  6  TrXoOro?,  6  o'/co9,  but  17  irevia,  f)  oucia. 
This  gender  distinction  pervades  all  the  older 


IN   THE   INDO-EUROPEAN   LANGUAGES  3 

Indo-European  languages,  and  must  therefore  be 
regarded  as  having  its  origin  in  the  time  of  the 
pro-ethnic  Indo-European  community.  Not  only 
is  the  subject  itself  full  of  interest,  but  also  the 
treatment  it  has  received  from  the  philological 
research  of  our  century.  The  various  efforts 
made  to  solve  the  problem  may  very  aptly  illus- 
trate an  essential  difference  which  exists  between 
the  theories  of  language  development  held  in  the 
beginning  and  middle  of  this  century  and  those 
which  prevail  to-day,  —  a  difference  of  method 
existing  not  in  comparative  linguistics  alone,  but 
also  in  other  fields  of  philological  and  historical 
research  that  border  on  it. 

Permit  me,  then,  gentlemen,  in  this  lecture, 
first  to  set  before  you  the  views  of  earlier  inves- 
tigators on  this  subject,  and  then  the  position 
taken  by  scholars  of  more  recent  times. 

Let  me  neglect,  for  the  moment,  the  so-called 
neuter  gender,  and  consider  only  the  distinction 
made  in  nouns  between  masculine  and  feminine. 
First  of  all,  we  must  notice  that  there  is  a  cer- 
tain difference  in  the  mode  of  expressing  this 
gender  distinction  in  the  Indo-European  lan- 
guages, depending  upon  whether  it  is  a  real 
physical  sex  that  is  marked,  or  what  is  usually 
called  "  formal "  or  "  grammatical "  gender,  which 


4        NATURE   AND   ORIGIN   OF   NOUN   GENDERS 

has  to  do  with  concepts  possessing  no  natural,  ani- 
mal gender.  In  the  case  of  natural  sex  there  is  to 
be  noticed  in  all  Indo-European  languages  a  two- 
fold method  of  giving  it  expression.  In  a  number 
of  the  words  that  denote  living  beings  the  name  for 
the  male  and  the  name  for  the  female  are  formed 
from  different  roots,  and  the  mode  of  inflection  may 
be  the  same  for  both  roots.  It  is  so  in  the  case 
of  Latin  pater  and  mater,  Greek  Trarrjp  and  i^rjr^p. 
Here  the  root  of  the  word  distinguishes  between 
the  male  and  the  female.  Take,  on  the  other 
hand,  pairs  such  as  Latin  deus  and  dea,  gallus 
and  gallina,  Greek  0eo9, '  god ',  and  Bed,  '  goddess  ', 
\VKOS,  'wolf,  and  \vfcaiva,  'she-wolf,  English 
god  and  goddess :  here  the  word  for  the  male  and 
that  for  the  female  have  the  same  root  material 
and  a  common  stem  meaning;  the  inflectional 
ending  only  is  different.  The  grammatical  term 
for  this  in  German  is  "  motion  ".  We  say  the 
word  is  "  moviert "  in  order  to  mark  the  femi- 
nine sex.  In  cases  of  grammatical  gender,  on 
the  contrary,  there  is  but  one  way  of  making 
a  distinction,  —  viz.,  by  inflection.  The  gender 
is  made  evident  only  by  the  inflectional  end- 
ings, as  in  Latin  animus,  anima,  Greek  oZ«:os, 
olxia.  This  fact  shows  us  that  the  question  as 
to  how  "formal"  gender  is  related  to  natural 


IN   THE   INDO-EUROPEAN   LANGUAGES  5 

gender,  and  how  the  history  of  both  is  to  be 
investigated,  depends  entirely  and  exclusively 
on  the  terminations  used  to  express  gender,  on 
the  inflectional  suffixes  which  mark  sex. 

In  only  two  or  three  places  in  the  whole 
circle  of  human  languages  has  anything  been 
found  comparable  with  the  formal  gender  of 
the  Indo-European  languages.  In  the  Semitic- 
Hamitic  group,  especially,  the  whole  language 
is  pervaded  with  the  idea  of  gender,  but  in  a 
manner  that  is  entirely  different  from  the  Indo- 
European,  externally  and  internally.  There  are 
scholars  who  believe  in  a  relationship  between 
the  Semitic-Hamitic  family  and  the  Indo-Euro- 
pean, but  up  to  the  present  it  has  not  been 
proved ;  and  the  so-called  gender  of  nouns  is  of 
all  things  least  adapted  to  furnish  an  argument 
for  a  close  genealogical  connection.  Every- 
thing goes  to  prove  that  in  the  matter  of  gen- 
der there  was  no  common  development,  but  that 
the  genders  had  a  separate  history.  It  is  ac- 
cordingly correct  method  if  we  first  investigate 
the  history  of  noun  genders  in  each  family  by 
itself. 

"VVe  have  noticed  that  very  few  families  of 
languages  mark  gender  distinctions  in  their  sub- 
stantives. Even  within  the  Indo-European,  not 


6    NATUKE  AND  ORIGIN  OF  NOUN  GENDEKS 

all  of  the  languages  have  preserved  this  pecu- 
liarity. The  English,  for  example,  has  but  a  few 
remains.  These  languages  without  grammatical 
gender  are  just  as  well  off.  The  category  is 
entirely  superfluous  as  regards  the  main  pur- 
pose of  language,  which  is  to  express  thought 
in  the  clearest  possible  manner.  Not  only  su- 
perfluous is  it,  but  often  even  contradictory  and 
foolish.  Sophists  like  Protagoras  held  this  opin- 
ion in  antiquity.  They  ridiculed  the  gender 
distinctions  of  the  Greek,  and  it  is  easy  to  see 
why.  What  real  connection  with  animal  gen- 
der have  all  those  concepts  which  our  primitive 
ancestors  characterized  as  masculine  or  feminine? 
This  peculiarity  of  our  language  does  not  usu- 
ally cause  any  practical  difficulty  to  us  Indo- 
Europeans.  We  learn  it,  as  we  learn  all  other 
peculiarities  of  the  language  structure,  in  early 
childhood.  It  enters  in  sucum  et  sanguinem 
with  the  rest.  People  who  are  not  ludo-Euro- 
peans,  whose  mother  tongue  has  no  formal  gen- 
der, have  a  very  different  experience,  when  in 
more  mature  years  they  learn  a  language  like 
the  Greek  or  Latin.  A  new  world  opens  itself 
to  them  as  they  find,  for  example,  Latin  animus 
called  a  masculine  form,  and  anima  a  feminine 
form.  They  marvel  at  the  imagination  of  the 


IN  THE   INDO-EUROPEAN   LANGUAGES  7 

Indo-European  people,  who  can  look  at  every- 
thing, be  it  never  so  abstract  and  lifeless,  as  a 
concrete  object,  and  as  having  a  corporeal  exist- 
ence, and  who,  further,  assign  a  sex  in  each  case, 
masculine  or  feminine. 

The  grammarians  of  classical  antiquity  did 
little  more  with  this  problem  than  to  become 
thoroughly  perplexed  over  it.  They  contented 
themselves  with  the  assertion  that  man  uttering 
speech  had  the  right  to  assign  arbitrarily  a  sex 
to  any  object  which  had  in  this  particular  been 
neglected  by  nature.  Not  until  the  philosophic 
grammar  of  the  eighteenth  century  took  hold  of 
the  subject,  was  it  treated  in  a  scientific  manner. 
Herder  and  Adelung  were  the  first  to  attempt  an 
explanation.  They  insisted  that  early  man  in  his 
simplicity  long  considered  everything  he  looked 
upon  as  animated,  and  treated  it  as  a  living  be- 
ing. Grammatical  gender  is,  according  to  this, 
the  result  of  the  tendency  of  primitive  man  to 
individualize  and  personify.  Adelung  tried  also 
to  specify  why  in  particular  cases  this  or  that 
gender  was  chosen.  He  says  that  everything 
which  was  characterized  by  activity,  liveliness, 
strength,  size,  or  had  anything  of  the  frightful 
or  terrible  in  its  nature  was  made  masculine. 
Those  objects,  on  the  contrary,  that  were  felt 


8         NATURE   AND   ORIGIN   OF  NOUN   GENDERS 

to  be  susceptible,  fertile,  delicate,  passive,  attrac- 
tive, became  feminine.  Jacob  Grimm  followed  in 
this  track  in  the  third  volume  of  his  German 
Grammar.  He  treats  the  question  of  the  origin 
of  noun  genders  in  the  Indo-European  languages 
at  great  length  —  some  two  hundred  and  fifty 
pages  —  and  with  all  his  incomparable  skill  and 
grace  in  presentation.  He  believes  with  Adelung 
that  grammatical  gender  had  its  origin  in  the 
creative  imagination  of  the  primitive  folk.  He 
thinks  that  in  that  remote  pro-ethnic  period,  at  a 
time  when  imagination,  not  reason,  was  the  pre- 
dominant faculty,  man  individualized  and  person- 
ified every  possible  lifeless  object  of  the  external 
world,  and  assigned  to  it  masculine  or  feminine 
traits.  Just  as  Adelung,  Grimm  also  believes 
that  whatever  gave  the  impression  of  the  larger, 
stronger,  more  rough,  more  active,  was  looked 
upon  as  masculine;  on  the  contrary,  whatever 
was  felt  to  be  smaller,  finer,  more  gentle,  soft, 
tender,  or  still,  was  made  feminine.  He  tries 
to  prove  this  by  many  special  cases,  and  in- 
vestigates with  poetic  spirit  the  characteristics 
of  natural  objects.  One  says  die  hand,  haec 
manus,  r)  X€i'P>  but  der  fuss,  hlc  pes,  6  TTOU?, 
because  the  hand  is  thought  of  as  the  smaller, 
daintier,  the  foot  as  larger  and  stronger.  All 


IN   THE   INDO-EUROPEAN   LANGUAGES  9 

the  philologists  of  that  day  accepted  the  Ade- 
lung-Grimm.  hypothesis,  and  it  remained  unat- 
tacked  until  long  past  the  middle  of  the  present 
century.  Wilhelm  von  Humboldt,  Pott,  Miklo- 
sich,  Steinthal,  Madvig,  and  Georg  Curtius,  for 
example,  accepted  it  openly.  It  is  unnecessary 
for  me  to  describe  at  length  how  this  theory 
stands  in  the  closest  relation  to  a  belief  still  pre- 
vailing in  the  days  of  Humboldt  and  Grimm, 
—  the  belief  in  a  golden  age  of  mankind,  where 
poetry  beautified  and  simplified  the  whole  life  of 
primitive  man.  Nor  need  I  dwell  on  its  par- 
ticularly close  relation  to  the  then  current  theory 
of  the  origin  and  nature  of  folk-poetry.  The  ex- 
planation of  Adelung  and  Grimm  has  long  out- 
lived those  views  and  beliefs  out  of  which  it 
originated.  Yet  even  Wilhelm  Scherer  called 
the  chapter  on  gender  the  acme  of  Grimm's 
grammar.  And  only  a  few  years  ago,  in  1890, 
this  theory  found  a  warm  and  eloquent  defender 
in  the  person  of  Gustav  Eoethe,  a  young  Ger- 
manic scholar  of  talent  and  repute.  In  the  pref- 
ace to  the  new  edition  of  the  third  volume  of 
Grimm's  grammar,  edited  by  him,  this  scholar 
declares  Grimm's  view  of  the  origin  of  gender 
to  be  correct  in  all  essential  points.  But  op- 
position had  arisen  before  Roethe's  time.  A 


10      NATURE   AND   ORIGIN   OF   NOUN   GENDERS 

calmer  and  more  critical  spirit  began  to  pervade 
the  science  of  language  from  about  the  year 
1870.  The  more  matter-of-fact  learning  of  the 
newer  linguistics,  which  supports  itself  on  more 
solid  foundations,  was  compelled  to  question  seri- 
ously Grimm's  hypothesis  ;  and  the  decision  had 
to  be  rendered  that  this  theory,  though  idealistic 
and  poetic,  was  not  strictly  scientific.  Allow  me 
to  present  to  you  in  few  words  the  reasons  why 
I,  as  well  as  some  other  philologists,  have  come  to 
the  conclusion  that  it  must  be  rejected. 

Firstly.  If  we  pursue  a  correct  method  and 
start  from  what  we  know  empirically ;  if  we  con- 
fine ourselves  to  the  facts  that  lie  clearly  before 
us  and  can  be  judged  by  the  materials  of  our 
science,  —  facts  that  belong  to  the  present  or 
recent  past  of  our  Indo-European  languages, — 
then  we  must  assert  that  masculine  and  feminine 
as  grammatical  genders  say  and  mean  nothing 
for  the  speech  of  every-day  life.  And  it  is  only 
the  ordinary,  every-day  language  that  is  of  im- 
portance for  this  subject.  By  the  grammatical 
gender,  no  idea  of  anything  masculine  or  femi- 
nine, either  in  literal  or  figurative  sense,  is  called 
up.  The  masculine  and  feminine  suffixes  differ 
entirely  from  other  noun  suffixes,  to  which  gram- 
matical terminology  has  assigned  names  on  the 


IN   THE   INDO-EUROPEAN   LANGUAGES          11 

basis  of  some  definite  signification.  The  Germans, 
for  example,  call  -chen  and  -lein  diminutive  suf- 
fixes, and,  in  fact,  every  German  understands  by 
sohnchen  and  sohnlein  a  small  son.  So  in  Eng- 
lish 'booklet  is  a  small  book,  or  lambkin  is  a  little 
lamb.  Nowhere,  however,  in  the  Indo-European 
languages  can  it  be  proved  that,  for  example, 
the  Indo-European  "feminine  suffix"  -a,  as  it 
appears  to-day  in  Lithuanian  and  Eussian,  e.  g., 
Lithuanian  ranka,  Russian  rukd,  '  hand ',  and  as 
the  Romans  had  it  in  anima,  casa,  fuga,  the 
Greeks  in  %o>/oa,  'land',  ot/cia,  'house',  calls  up, 
or  has  called  up  in  any  degree,  the  idea  of  female 
or  of  any  especially  feminine  characteristic.  And 
how  can  any  one  prove  that  it  was  different  in 
the  primitive  community,  when  there  must  have 
been  hundreds  of  substantives  in  -a-  which  did 
not  signify  living  beings  ?  Among  these,  too, 
there  must  have  been  many  that  denoted  con- 
cepts which  were  in  no  sense  concrete,  but 
purely  abstract,  as,  for  example,  *q%oina,  l  recom- 
pense ',  from  which  comes  Avestan  kalna,  Greek 
vroivrj,  Old  Church  Slavonic  cena.  That  the  formal 
gender  in  our  Indo-European  languages  for  thou- 
sands of  years  was  not  connected  with  the  idea 
of  the  masculine  or  feminine,  is  shown  by  quite 
unmistakable  evidence.  I  will  call  attention 


12      NATURE   AND   ORIGIN   OF   NOUN   GENDERS 

here  to  but  one  proof.  'EvriKoiva  (epicoena)  is 
the  term  used  by  grammarians  for  those  sub- 
stantives which,  although  they  denote  animals, 
have  for  both  physical  genders  only  one  lan- 
guage expression.  The  German  says  der  hase, 
1  the  hare ',  der  adler,  '  the  eagle ',  and  means  by 
this  both  the  male  and  female  ;  again,  die  mans, 
' the  mouse ',  die  eule,  ' the  owl ',  for  both  the 
male  and  female.  In  like  manner  the  Greeks  said, 
for  example,  6  /«,{)<?,  '  the  mouse' ,  but  97  dXwTn;^, 
'the  fox'.  If  there  had  been  any  feeling  that 
the  real  physical  sex  was  expressed  by  the  gen- 
der assigned  to  the  word  by  the  language,  they 
would  have  had  to  understand  by  der  hase  al- 
ways the  male  hare  only,  and  by  die  maus 
always  the  female  mouse.  Further,  when  one 
said  der  weibliche  hase  or  die  mdnnliche 
maus,  he  would  feel  that  this  manner  of  expres- 
sion contained  a  downright  contradiction.  But 
this  is  nowhere  the  case. 

A  second  point  which  speaks  against  Grimm's 
hypothesis  is  the  following.  The  Indo-Europeans, 
from  the  very  fact  of  being  a  primitive  people 
without  culture,  are  asserted  to  have  had  this 
remarkable  impulse  to  personify  and  sexualize. 
This  tendency  accordingly  made  them  take  a 
fanciful  view  of  the  whole  universe  and  think 


IN   THE   INDO-EUROPEAN   LANGUAGES          13 

of  the  great  majority  of  noun  concepts  as  male 
or  female.  Now  there  are  peoples  to-day  who 
still  represent  about  the  same  degree  of  culture 
which  we  must  suppose  our  ancestors  possessed 
at  the  time  when  they  began  to  differentiate 
nouns  into  masculine  and  feminine.  Should  we 
not  find  among  these  peoples  some  parallel  to 
this  mental  attitude  ?  Yet  nothing  has  come  to 
light  at  all  comparable  with  the  Indo-European 
sexualizing  — in  the  sense  in  which  it  is  presup- 
posed by  Grimm's  hypothesis ;  this  too,  though 
some  of  these  uncultured  peoples  look  at  every- 
thing in  a  very  concrete  fashion,  and  possess  a 
very  lively  imagination,  which  displays  itself  in 
their  language  as  well  as  in  many  other  direc- 
tions. It  is  not  a  valid  objection  to  say  here  that 
the  structure  of  the  languages  of  these  savage 
peoples  is  essentially  different  from  that  of  the 
Indo-European  languages,  and  also  from  that  of 
the  Semitic-Hamitic  languages.  In  a  psychologi- 
cal sense,  the  grammatical  categories  of  our  in- 
flectional languages  are  to  be  found  in  every 
language  of  the  earth ;  the  mode  of  expression 
alone  is  different.  Had  the  Indo-European  gen- 
der suffixes  originally  meant  male  and  female, 
or  manlike  and  womanlike,  the  other  languages 
would  have  been  by  no  means  without  analogies 


14      NATURE   AND   ORIGIN   OF   NOUN   GENDERS 

in  their  manner  and  means  of  expressing  gender 
distinctions. 

In  the  third  place,  Grimm's  theory  is  in  itself 
psychologically  improbable.  It  presupposes  that 
noun  concepts  were  always  (1)  individualized 
and  thought  of  as  a  separate  object,  (2)  conceived 
of  as  a  living  being,  and  (3)  sexualized  as  male 
or  female.  Now,  for  primitive  man  the  external 
world  was  mostly  matter,  material,  just  as  it  is 
for  us  to-day,  but  to  him  even  more  so  perhaps 
than  to  us.  Material  and  general  concepts,  such 
as  gold,  mud,  water,  fog,  flesh,  grain,  were  cer- 
tainly not  as  a  rule  conceived  of  and  named  in 
the  pro-ethnic  period  as  individuals;  yet  they 
show  in  large  part,  since  primitive  times,  either 
masculine  or  feminine  gender.  How  is  it  that 
such  substantive  concepts  came  to  be  conceived 
of  as  male  or  female,  if  they  were  not  even  con- 
sidered as  an  individual  ?  Further  than  this, 
that  which  is  individualized  is  not  necessarily 
thought  of  as  animated  and  personal.  Even  if 
we  imagine  to  ourselves  the  fancy  of  the  Indo- 
Europeari  as  lively  and  active,  creating  for  itself 
many  mythical  images,  yet  however  active  it 
may  have  been,  it  could  have  drawn  only  a  small 
circle  of  objects  into  its  scope.  It  is  certainly 
true  that  our  primitive  ancestors  thought  more 


IN   THE   INDO-EUROPEAN   LANGUAGES          15 

in  the  concrete  than  we  moderns.  But  "  con- 
crete thinking"  does  not  mean  to  consider  as 
man  or  beast  something  which  is  not  concrete, 
but  which  is  in  its  very  essence  abstract.  Ani- 
malization  and  personification,  like  poetry,  have 
their  origin  in  fantastic,  exalted  feeling,  and  there 
never  has  been  a  time  when  man  stood  continu- 
ally on  such  a  poetic  height.  Every-day  life  is 
hard  and  prosaic  in  modern  times,  and  still  more 
stern  and  prosaic  was  it  in  those  primitive  days 
to  which  Grimm's  theory  carries  us  back.  Aside 
from  this,  the  creative  imagination  of  man  pro- 
duces not  only  anthropomorphic  and  theriomor- 
phic  beings,  but  also  inanimate,  material  meta- 
phors. The  cloud  floating  across  the  .heavens, 
for  example,  is  looked  upon  in  mythology  as  an 
animate  being,  as  a  giant,  but  is  also  considered 
as  a  garment  of  air,  a  cloak,  or  something  simi- 
lar. Why  should  one  think  that  primitive  man 
overloaded  language  with  personal  metaphors 
instead  of  impersonal  ?  And,  thirdly,  each  par- 
ticular thing,  even  if  it  is  animalized,  is  not 
necessarily  at  the  same  time  sexualized.  Very 
often  our  imagination  discovers  in  a  lifeless  ob- 
ject attributes  of  a  person,  and  for  the  moment, 
or  for  a  longer  time,  personifies  this  object,  and 
forms  out  of  it  a  living  being.  But  it  is  not 


16      NATUKE   AND   ORIGIN   OF  NOUN   GENDERS 

necessary  that  all  the  characteristics  of  a  living 
being  be  present  in  our  consciousness,  and  that 
in  each  case  we  think  of  the  objects  accordingly 
as  male  or  female.  Language  itself  shows  us, 
with  its  epicene  nouns  already  mentioned,  with 
its  words  like  Greek  \VKOS,  Latin  lupus,  German 
wolf,  used  alike  for  male  or  female,  that  often 
enough  no  notice  is  taken  of  distinction  of  sex. 

One  fact  stands  out  •  clearly  as  the  conclusion 
to  all  this :  Grimm's  theory  ascribes  to  the  Indo- 
Europeans  a  mental  condition  which  we  cannot 
harmonize  with  what  we  actually  know  of  the 
mental  life  of  man  and  of  races.  It  may  find  a 
parallel,  at  best,  in  certain  pathological  states  of 
the  human  intellect.  But,  you  may  ask,  does 
not  one  thing  argue  very  strongly  in  favor  of 
Grimm's  theory,  —  the  fact,  namely,  that  in  the 
mythology  and  poetry  of  the  Indo-European 
people,  where  lifeless  concepts  are  personified, 
the  sex  of  the  mythological  personage  corre- 
sponds regularly  to  the  grammatical  gender  of 
the  words  concerned?  The  Greeks  thought  of 
VTTVOS,  'Sleep',  and  Odvaros,  'Death',  as  male 
deities,  not  as  female,  and  yala,  '  Earth  ',  and  drrj, 
'  Folly ',  as  goddesses,  not  as  gods.  In  the  old 
Germanic  mythology  der  Tag  (New  High  Ger- 
man d  e  r  tag)  appears  only  as  a  god,  die  Nacht 


IN  THE   INDO-EUROPEAN   LANGUAGES          17 

(New  High  German  die  nachf)  only  as  a  god- 
dess. Among  the  Hindoos  agni,  the  '  Fire ',  only 
as  a  god,  usas,  the  'Dawn',  only  as  a  goddess. 
And  so  in  other  cases.  But  this  sort  of  per- 
sonification in  no  way  substantiates  the  theory 
that  the  origin  of  grammatical  gender  is  to  be 
sought  in  the  particularly  active  imagination  of 
the  primitive  Indo-European  people.  Grimm's 
theory  deceived  our  mythologists  and  led  them 
to  a  mistaken  view,  —  a  view  that  meets  us  in 
several  places  in  the  otherwise  instructive  book 
of  H.  Usener  on  the  "  Gbtternamen."  In  all  the 
cases  that  come  into  consideration  here  the  gram- 
matical gender  of  the  word,  so  far  as  we  can 
judge,  is  the  earlier.  The  imagination  used  this 
gender  and  allowed  itself  to  be  led  by  it.  The 
procedure  is  the  same  whether  it  is  uncultivated 
primitive  man  creating  a  myth  unconsciously,  or 
the  poet  doing  it  with  conscious  effort.  When 
either  personified  a  lifeless  concept  into  a  living 
being,  it  was  the  grammatical  form  of  the  noun 
that,  through  the  psychological  impulse  of  ana- 
logy, an  impulse  that  was  very  strong,  and  was, 
indeed,  almost  compulsory,  decided  the  definite 
direction  of  the  gender,  —  whether  it  should  be 
masculine  or  feminine.  Our  thoughts  and  con- 
ceptions cling  close  to  the  language  form.  We 

2 


18      NATURE  AND   ORIGIN   OF   NOUN   GENDERS 

do  not  control  and  lead  language,  but  language 
rules  and  directs  us.  The  Greek  virvos,  for  ex- 
ample, was  from  Indo-European  time  a  simple 
appellative,  just  as  the  corresponding  words  in 
the  other  Indo-European  languages,  Latin  somnus, 
Sanskrit  svdpnas,  Lithuanian  sapnas,  etc.  Be- 
cause vTrvof  had  the  same  inflectional  form  as  the 
numerous  masculine  nouns  in  -09,  like  d8e\<£o?, 
'  brother  ',  tfeo'?,  '  god ',  and  was,  in  consequence, 
most  closely  associated  in  the  consciousness  with 
these,  the  Greeks  made  Sleep  a  god  and  not  a 
goddess.  So  far  as  the  concept  itself  was  con- 
cerned, there  was  nothing  to  prevent  Sleep  from 
being  personified  as  a  female.  "Tyfeia,  '  Health ', 
became  a  female  deity,  because  the  word  in  its 
inflectional  form  corresponded  to  the  numerous 
words  denoting  females,  —  such  as  <ypaia,  '  old 
woman ',  irorvia,  '  mistress  '.  There  is  nothing  in 
the  nature  of  health  that  compelled  it  to  be  of 
either  gender  as  opposed  to  the  other.  For  this 
reason  the  separate  Indo-European  peoples  have 
often  assigned  different  genders  to  the  same  dei- 
ties ;  the  cause  being  that  the  appellative  itself 
was  of  different  genders  in  the  different  lan- 
guages. To  the  Greeks  and  Eomans  e/aw?  and 
amor  was  a  boy  or  youth ;  for  both  these  words 
were  masculine  when  used  as  appellatives.  To 


IN   THE   INDO-EUROPEAN   LANGUAGES          19 

the  Germans,  on  the  contrary,  die  Minne,  die 
Liebe  was  a  goddess,  since  the  appellative  was 
feminine.  To  the  same  cause  are  due  the  differ- 
ent conceptions  of  the  sun  and  moon,  as  male  or 
female,  among  the  different  peoples ;  it  is  always 
according  to  the  nature  of  the  appellative.  In 
the  pro-ethnic  period  the  state  of  affairs  must 
have  been  similar.  Therefore,  there  is  nothing 
to  hinder  the  assumption  that  pro-ethnic  *dyeus, 
the  dyaus  of  the  ancient  Hindoos,  the  Zeik  of 
the  Greeks,  the  Jupiter  (Juppiier)  of  the  Eomans, 
became  a  male  deity,  and  not  a  female,  because  the 
name,  originally  meaning  '  heaven  '  and  '  bright 
day ',  was  a  masculine  appellative.  In  every  case 
where  the  mythological  name  is  at  the  same  time 
retained  in  its  original  appellative  signification, 
we  have  a  similar  right  to  assume  that  only  the 
grammatical  gender  was  present  at  first,  and  that 
this  decided  the  choice  of  sex  for  the  personified 
conception.  Even  to-day,  in  the  art  of  the  Ger- 
mans and  other  peoples  who  still  have  the  gram- 
matical gender,  this  gender  receives  recognition. 
I  know  of  numerous  pictures  and  statues  which 
represent  die  elektricitdt  as  a  person,  and  all  per- 
sonify the  force  as  a  female.  Yet  occasionally 
the  grammatical  gender  is  overlooked.  At  an 
art  exhibition  in  one  of  the  larger  German  cities 


20   NATUEE  AND  ORIGIN  OF  NOUN  GENDEKS 

about  fifteen  years  ago,  Hunger  was  to  be  seen 
represented  in  marble  as  a  ragged,  hollow-eyed 
old  vyoman.  At  the  base  of  the  statue  was  the 
inscription  Der  Hunger.  A  critic  claimed,  in  a 
newspaper  article,  that  this  was  incorrect.  Der 
Hunger  should  be  made  a  man.  The  artist  had 
perhaps  followed  a  French  prototype,  whose 
creator  had  chosen  a  woman  because  of  la  faim. 
The  sculptor  got  rid  of  the  inaccuracy,  but  not 
by  carving  a  new  statue  and  making  it  a  man ; 
he  simply  wrote  beneath  his  figure  the  words,  — 
Die  Hungersnot. 

It  holds  good,  then,  for  the  historical  period  of 
the  Indo-European  languages,  that  in  personify- 
ing lifeless  things,  the  sex  is  usually  determined 
by  the  grammatical  gender;  and  no  one  can 
prove  that  in  such  cases  the  anthropomorphic 
conception  is  older  than  the  word  with  which 
our  ancestors  named  the  thing.  This  fact,  in 
my  opinion,  destroys  the  foundation  of  Grimm's 
hypothesis.  Jacob  Grimm,  with  poetic  fancy, 
sought  to  recall  to  us  a  beautiful  idyl  of  the 
past.  Sentimentalists  may  lament  the  excessive 
sobriety  and  arid  intellectuality  of  modern  gram- 
marians, which  dares  in  its  lack  of  appreciation 
to  disturb  this  idyl.  I,  for  my  part,  cannot  but 
feel  that,  in  declaring  the  beautiful  idyl  to  be  a 


IN  THE   INDO-EUROPEAN  LANGUAGES          21 

mere  poetic  glorification  of  the  imaginative  facul- 
ties of  our  ancestors,  and  in  explaining  gram- 
matical gender  as  a  fiction,  we  are  not  robbing 
them  of  anything  we  could  wish  them  to  have 
possessed. 

You  will  ask,  What  is  the  truth  about  gram- 
matical gender  ?  How  came  the  Indo-Europeans 
to  possess  it,  if  Grimm  is  in  the  wrong  ?  I  must 
consider  here  for  a  moment  the  so-called  neu- 
ter, which  has  thus  far  been  left  out  of  the 
discussion.  You  know  that  the  neuters  in  all 
Indo-European  languages,  so  far  as  their  stem 
formation  is  concerned,  belong  with  the  mascu- 
lines. Latin  jugum,  genitive  jugi,  etc.,  has  the 
same  o-suffix  that  appears  in  words  like  dolus, 
pypulus  ;  mare,  maris,  etc.,  has  the  same  i-suffix 
as  avis,  turris.  The  difference  between  the  neu- 
ters and  the  other  genders  consists  only  in  the 
different  case-forms  used  for  nominatives  and 
accusatives.  The  masculine  nominative  singular 
has  an  -s,  the  neuter  an  -m  as  case-sign.  This  is 
connected  with  a  fact  that  I  cannot  here  dwell 
upon  at  greater  length,  viz.,  that  while  the  forms 
with  -s  originally  served  as  the  subject  of  the 
sentence  (which  could  also  be  represented  by 
the  -m  form),  these  -s  forms  had,  besides  this,  a 
more  specific  meaning.  The  termination  -a  in 


22      NATURE    AND   ORIGIN   OF   NOUN   GENDERS 

Latin  plural  juga  was  a  mark  of  distinction  for  a 
collective  signification  of  the  noun  stem.  These 
are  relationships  of  a  very  different  character  from 
the  antithesis  of  masculine  and  feminine,  which 
has  up  to  this  point  received  our  attention.  One 
cannot,  to  be  sure,  neglect  entirely  the  neuter  in 
studying  the  origin  of  the  masculine  and  femi- 
nine, yet  the  development  of  the  neuter  is  an- 
other question,  and  one  subordinate  to  that  which 
regards  the  origin  of  the  other  two  genders.  We 
can  therefore  omit  it  from  this  discussion. 

The  masculine  and  feminine  gender  is  ex- 
pressed by  means  of  the  so-called  stem  suffixes, 
as,  for  example,  the  contrast  ace.  sg.  ani-mu-m 
and  ani-ma-m  shows.  All  suffixes  which  appear 
from  primitive  times  in  both  masculines  and 
feminines  are  here  irrelevant  to  the  question ; 
such  are  -i-,  -u-,  -men-,  -ter-,  -es-.  It  is  perfectly 
plain  that  these  never  had  a  specifically  mascu- 
line or  a  specifically  feminine  significance,  and 
had  consequently  nothing  whatever  to  do  with 
this  distinction.  Further  it  must  be  noticed, 
that  the  o-suffix  in  the  so-called  masculines,  such 
as  Latin  animus,  deus,  Greek  aVe/^o?,  0eo'<?,  cannot 
originally  have  denoted  a  physical  sex.  This  is 
shown  by  the  universally  recognized  fact  that 
those  substantives  in  -o-s  which  denote  men  or 


IN  THE   INDO-EUROPEAN  LANGUAGES          23 

beasts  were  used  primitively  as  a  general  term 
for  the  animal  without  regard  to  sex  distinction. 
Note,  for  example,  the  Indo-European  word 
*ek~o-s  =  Latin  equos,  Greek  ITTTTO?,  Sanskrit  asvas. 
It  signified  originally  horse  in  general,  and  did 
not  have  any  special  meaning  like  stallion.  Not 
until  there  appeared  by  the  side  of  such  substan- 
tives in  -o-s,  forms  with  the  suffix  -a-  or  with  the 
suffix  -ie-,  -i-  to  denote  the  female,  did  the  use  of 
the  o-stems  suffer  any  limitation.  It  was  then 
that  the  o-stem  first  came  to  be  employed  to 
signify  specifically  a  male  being.  In  this  way 
Latin  equos,  by  contrast  with  equa,  '  mare ',  ac- 
quired the  special  meaning  '  stallion '.  So  San- 
skrit vrkas,  in  contrast  with  vrki,  '  she-wolf ',  was 
used  to  mean  the  male  wolf.  In  a  word,  the 
whole  problem  that  is  at  present  claiming  our 
attention,  depends  for  its  settlement  on  one  ques- 
tion. What  was  the  original  function  of  the  -a- 
in  words  like  Latin  anima,  equa,  Greek  %&>/oa, 
'  land ',  Oea,  '  goddess ',  Sanskrit  bhida,  '  split '  ? 
And  what  was  the  original  function  of  the  -ie-,  -l- 
in  words  like  Latin  acies,  Greek  7\<wcrcra,  '  tongue', 
TTorvia, '  mistress ',  Sanskrit  sdcl,  '  strength  ',  vrki, 
'  she-wolf '  ? 

According   to  the   older   theory,  as   we  have 
seen,  these  suffixes  -a-,  -ie-(-l-)  originally  carried 


24      NATURE   AND   ORIGIN   OF   NOUN   GENDERS 

the  notion  of  female,  or  some  special  female 
characteristic.  "We  are  brought  to  a  different 
decision.  They  did  not,  in  all  probability,  have 
that  original  signification.  It  is  a  misuse  of  the 
grammatical  terminology  to  call  these  two  suf- 
fixes, in  general,  and  in  every  case  where  they 
appear  in  the  Indo-European  languages,  by  the 
name  "  feminine  suffixes."  They  are  feminine 
only  in  some  cases,  and,  indeed,  in  only  a  com- 
paratively small  proportion  of  the  whole  number, 
as  in  words  like  Greek  9ea  and  Trdrvia,  are  they 
really  what  we  ordinarily  call  them.  Similar 
misuse  and  similar  inaccuracy  and  inadequacy  of 
the  scientific  terminology  is  to  be  found  in  many 
other  cases.  To  mention  but  a  single  example : 
the  suffix  -to-  in  the  Latin  substantive  formations 
such  as  datus,  amatus,flmtus,  is  called  the  suffix  of 
the  perfect  "  passive  "  participle.  Yet  the  Latin 
has  numerous  -to-  participles  with  signification 
that  is  not  passive ;  for  example,  ratus,  secutvs. 
These  participles,  as  can  readily  be  proved,  never 
had,  in  Latin  nor  in  the  pro-ethnic  Italic  lan- 
guage nor  in  the  Indo-European,  passive  mean- 
ing. The  participial  suffix  -to-  was  originally 
used  to  form  verbal  adjectives  which  predi- 
cated an  action  as  a  distinguishing  character- 
istic or  peculiarity;  for  example,  vSmp  pvrov  is 


IN   THE   INDO-EUROPEAN   LANGUAGES          25 

water  which  has  the  characteristic  that  it  flows, 
and  in  which  the  flowing  is  perceptible.  This  is 
a  function  that  has  nothing  whatever  to  do  with 
the  distinction  between  active  and  passive.  Rec- 
ognizing this  fact,  we  can  understand  how  the 
suffix  came  to  be  used  in  all  the  older  Indo- 
European  languages  in  active  as  well  as  in  passive 
forms.  He  who  comprehends  all  Latin  -to-  parti- 
ciples under  the  name  perfect  "  passive "  parti- 
ciples makes  a  false  use  of  this  term.  This 
misuse  is  wide-spread,  and  unfortunately  so  in 
its  results,  for  it  gave  rise  to  the  belief  that  the 
fundamental  meaning  of  -to-  was  a  passive  one. 
In  a  very  similar  manner  the  circumstance  that 
-a-  and  -ie-  denote  the  female  animal  in  some  of 
the  substantives  formed  with  them,  has  had  the 
result  that  we  speak  of  the  "  feminine  "  suffix  in 
words  like  Latin  anima,  acies.  In  both  cases 
there  is  an  unjustifiable  generalization  of  a  term. 
If  one  examines  all  the  words  of  the  Indo- 
European  languages  which  are  formed  with  the 
suffixes  -a-,  -ie-(-^-),  he  comes  readily  to  the  view 
that  the  original  function  of  these  suffixes  was  to 
form  abstracts  and  collectives.  This  fundamental 
meaning  would,  in  many  cases,  be  preserved  un- 
changed in  all  Indo-European  languages.  It  re- 
mains in  Latin  fuga,  '  flight ',  juventa,  '  youth  ', 


26   NATURE  AND  ORIGIN  OF  NOUN  GENDERS 

acies,  '  sharpness ',  materies,  '  matter ',  '  building 
material '.  The  view  can  be  well  defended  that 
our  suffixes  started  with  this  original  function, 
and  acquired  afterwards,  though  still  of  course  in 
the  period  of  the  Indo-European  community,  the 
power  to  denote  living  beings  of  the  female  sex. 
Allow  me  to  establish  this  position  as  briefly  as 
possible.  It  is  a  peculiarity  of  the  languages  of 
the  Indo-European  family,  modern  as  well  as 
ancient,  that  names  with  abstract  signification 
are  often  employed  for  concrete  concepts.  Terms 
expressing  a  quality  come  to  be  used  to  denote  the 
individual  person  or  thing  which  possesses  that 
quality ;  further,  terms  of  collective  signification 
are  employed  to  designate  individuals.  A  good 
example  is  found  in  those  words  which  mean 
youth  and  youthfulness.  In  several  languages, 
words  such  as  these  have  come  to  be  used  as 
implying  a  single  youthful  person.  The  English 
word  youth  is  a  case.  Beauty  in  English,  and 
the  corresponding  die  schonheit  in  German,  are 
both  used  to  designate  beautiful  people,  though 
chiefly,  of  course,  those  who  belong  /car'  e^o^v, 
to  the  "  fair  sex."  The  German  employs  the  ab- 
stracts bedienung,  '  service ',  aufwartung,  '  attend- 
ance ',  for  individuals  who  serve  and  attend.  The 
German  frauenzimmer  in  the  older  New  High 


IN   THE   INDO-EUROPEAN   LANGUAGES          27 

German  meant  those  women  who  lived  together 
in  the  part  of  the  house  reserved  for  females,  viz., 
a  number  of  women.  Since  the  beginning  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  and  up  to  the  present  time 
also,  it  means  only  a  single  woman.  In  this  way, 
or  in  a  similar  way,  certain  abstracts  and  collec- 
tives in  -a-  and  -ie-  may,  in  the  Indo-European 
period,  have  become  names  for  females.  The 
common  Indo-European  word  for  woman,  pro- 
ethnic  *g~end  (Greek  yvvij,  Gothic  qino,  Old 
Church  Slavonic  zena),  can  originally  have  had 
the  meaning  '  bearing ', '  parturition ',  and  the  tran- 
sition to  the  signification  '  the  animal  that  bears ' 
would  have  been  the  same  as  the  transition  of  be- 
dienung,  '  service',  to  bedienendes  wesen,  bedienende 
person,  'one  who  serves',  English  colloquial  'help'. 
Pro-ethnic  *ek^d,  Latin  equa,  can  have  meant 
originally  '  a  drove  of  horses ',  '  a  stud  '.  The  way 
it  comes  to  mean  '  mare '  is  shown  by  the  Ger- 
man word  huhn;  this  meant  at  first  the  cocks  and 
the  hens  together,  then  the  flock  of  female  fowl, 
and  finally  the  individual  female  fowl.  If  the 
suffixes  -a-  and  -4e-  implanted  themselves  in  this 
manner  in  a  number  of  words  of  feminine  signi- 
fication, the  idea  of  feminine  sex  could  attach 
itself  to  the  suffixes,  and  they  could  acquire  this 
additional  shade  of  meaning.  The  final  step  was 


28      NATURE   AND   ORIGIN   OF   NOUN   GENDERS 

for  the  suffixes  to  become  "  productive  "  with  this 
meaning  inherent  in  them ;  and  that,  too,  has 
sure  parallels  in  both  the  newer  and  older  Indo- 
European  languages. 

I  quote  two  examples,  —  one  from  the  German 
and  one  from  the  Greek.  The  suffix  -iska-,  used 
by  Germans  to  form  adjectives,  equivalent  to 
English  -ish,  New  High  German  -isch,  had  origi- 
nally a  very  general  adjective  signification.  We 
have  it  in  Gothic  mannisJcs,  'manly',  in  English 
thievish,  in  New  High  German  himmlisch,  '  heav- 
enly '.  It  appears  with  especial  frequency  in  deri- 
vations from  the  names  of  persons  and  peoples, 
e.  g.,  New  High  German  kriegerisch,  romisch,  eng- 
lisch.  In  a  number  of  these  adjectives  it  hap- 
pens that  the  noun  forming  the  base  of  the 
adjective  is  the  name  of  a  person  whose  rank 
or  occupation  is  considered  blameworthy  or  con- 
temptible ;  such  as  New  High  German  diebisch, 
from  dieb,  '  thief ',  rduberisch  from  rduber,  '  rob- 
ber ',  ndrrisch  from  narr,  '  fool '.  In  this  way 
the  element  -isch  has  itself  come  to  share  in  the 
idea  of  the  contemptible,  and  particularly  in  this 
direction  has  become  "  productive  "  in  New  High 
German.  New  words  have  been  coined  with  the 
suffix  -isch  to  express  the  sense  of  contempt. 
Abgottiscli,  'idolatrous',  teuflisch,  'devilish',  selbst- 


IN   THE   INDO-EUROPEAN   LANGUAGES  29 

isck,  'selfish',  linkisch, '  awkward',  hdmisch,  'knav- 
ish ',  are  examples.  The  suffix  has  not,  however, 
in  all  cases  acquired  the  additional  ethical  sig- 
nificance. In  himmlisch,  'heavenly',  stddtisch, 
'urban',  kriegerisch,  'warlike',  and  many  other 
adjectives  it  has  retained  its  ancient  meaning, 
which  implied  no  notion  either  of  contempt  or 
esteem.  Just  as  these  last-mentioned  words 
have  remained  entirely  uninfluenced  by  the  idea 
of  contempt,  so  many  of  the  substantives  formed 
with  -a-  and  -ie-  contain  nothing  of  the  idea  of 
feminine  sex  :  such  are  Latin  fuga,  anima,  Greek 
<f>wyri,  xcopa,  etc.  The  parallelism  goes  still  fur- 
ther. If  the  Romans,  when  they  personified  luna 
or  abundantia,  thought  of  them  as  feminine,  and 
made  them  female  deities  because  they  associated 
them  with  words  for  female  beings  like  dea,  fem- 
ina,  lupa,  the  process  is  analogous  to  the  treat- 
ment of  kindisch,  'childish',  weibisch,  'womanish'. 
These  last  did  not  yet  have  in  Luther's  time  any 
touch  of  disparagement  in  their  meaning,  but  de- 
noted what  is  to-day  expressed  by  kindlicli, '  child- 
like ',  and  weiblich, '  womanly '.  They  received  the 
secondary  touch  of  disparagement  in  consequence 
of  the  influence  of  adjectives  like  diebisch,  ndr- 
riscJi,  teuflisch,  and  the  like.  The  further  ex- 
ample is  the  history  of  the  primitive  suffix  -bho- 


30      NATURE    AND    ORIGIN    OF   NOUN    GENDERS 

in  Greek.  This  suffix,  whose  original  meaning 
is  not  clear,  is  found  in  Greek  in  names  of 
animals,  like  e\a(/>o9,  '  stag ',  acr/eaA,a</>o9,  '  owl ', 
but  also  in  words  of  entirely  different  signifi- 
cation, as  tf/>oYa</>o9,  '  temple ',  /eo'Xa</>o9,  '  cuff  on 
the  ears  ',  </>\^va(£o9,  '  gossip  ',  '  chatter '.  The 
Greek  inherited  two  or  three  names  for  animals 
which  had  this  termination  from  the  time  of  the 
Indo-European  community.  They  became  models 
in  the  Greek  language,  and  a  large  number  of 
animals  received  names  in  -a<£o9,  -a(f>r],  formed  on 
the  analogy  of  these  few.  On  the  signification 
of  the  words  like  /epo'ra(/>o9,  which  lay  outside  of 
this  category,  the  spread  of  -a<£o9  in  the  zoologi- 
cal terminology  had  no  influence. 

There  are  still,  gentlemen,  many  other  ques- 
tions which  I  should  answer,  and  these  have  no 
doubt  occurred  to  you  in  the  course  of  my  dis- 
cussion. Above  all,  there  is  the  question  as  to 
how  the  Indo-European  people  came  to  express 
distinctions  of  gender  in  the  forms  of  the  ad- 
jectives, as  in  magnus,-a,-um.  I  cannot  attempt 
to-day  to  enter  upon  these  difficult  and  complex 
problems.  The  solution  of  the  main  problem 
does  not  depend  upon  them.  It  is  sufficient  for 
me  to  have  shown  that  it  is  possible  to  take  a 
historical  view  of  the  noun  genders  masculine 


IN   THE   INDO-EUROPEAN   LANGUAGES          31 

and  feminine  without  ascribing  to  our  Indo- 
European  ancestors  a  mental  state  that  has  no 
analogy  in  those  periods  that  are  familiar  to  us 
from  historical  tradition.  The  solution  which  I 
have  presented  to  you  can  unfortunately  never 
be  absolutely  proved ;  for  we  have  to  do  with  a 
period  in  the  history  of  language  in  which  we 
cannot  go  a  step  further  than  simple  hypothesis. 
It  can  be  said,  however,  of  our  explanation,  and 
it  is  indeed  its  strongest  claim  over  the  theory 
of  Adelung  and  Grimm,  that  it  keeps  within  the 
limits  of  phenomena  which  are  among  the  best 
substantiated  in  the  history  of  the  Indo-European 
language  family,  and  which  may  be  observed  in 
the  very  latest  phases  of  its  development. 

And  so  I  return,  in  my  conclusion,  to  that 
statement  with  which  I  began.  I  said  that  the 
different  attempts  which  have  been  made  to 
explain  the  problem  of  grammatical  gender  in 
the  Indo-European  speech  illustrate  well  the 
difference  between  the  methods  of  investigation 
employed  by  the  older  generation  of  linguistic 
students,  and  those  of  the  generation  at  work  in 
the  present.  In  the  time  of  Grimm  and  Bopp 
and  their  immediate  successors,  it  was  the  cus- 
tom to  devote  attention  preferably  to  the  prehis- 
toric times,  and  to  explain  the  peculiarities  of 


32      NATURE   AND   ORIGIN   OF   NOUN   GENDERS 

the  primitive  language  largely  on  subjective  theo- 
ries. Forces  and  tendencies  were  ascribed  to  the 
primitive  tongue  and  to  the  prehistoric  period 
which  have  no  analogy  in  historical  times,  and 
pro-ethnic  antiquity  was  thus  surrounded  with 
a  fantastic  and  mystical  glamour.  The  later 
investigation  regards  more  the  present.  It  con- 
siders it  of  the  chief  importance  to  understand 
that  which  is  now  before  us,  and  that  which  be- 
longs to  the  immediate  past,  investigating  its 
growth  and  development.  Its  principle  is  this : 
to  take  as  the  starting-point  what  is  known  by 
experience,  and  to  apply  this  to  the  unknown  of 
the  past,  to  the  conditions  of  prehistoric  times  ; 
to  use  it  not  without  discretion,  but  yet  as  the 
main  criterion  for  recognizing  ancient  conditions. 
In  this  way  we  may  hope  to  throw  some  light  even 
upon  those  most  remote  periods  in  the  history  of 
our  language.  Your  own  countryman  Whitney 
was  one  of  the  first  to  insist  on  these  principles 
of  investigation.  It  is  my  hope  that  this  spirit 
of  genuine  historical  induction,  which  has  pre- 
vailed but  a  single  score  of  years  in  linguistic 
science,  may  never  again  be  lost  to  Indo-Euro- 
pean philology. 


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